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How can I help my baby grow into a happy adult?
Does a child need to hear Mozart and play with expensive toys to be intelligent? What about computer games: will they destroy my toddler’s brain? What can parents do to teach a sandbox tyrant to fair play? Is all lost because I was too tired to play with my child, or because I lost my temper at the supermarket?
Life’s greatest joy and biggest sources of concern often appear in the same little package. The responsibility can catch parents off guard: it’s like being assigned the most important job in the world without any training, let alone experience. Advice is readily available from the internet, friends, and family, but it’s often conflicting – and besides, the best place to look for guidance is the child, in all of his or her individual uniqueness.
Understanding how the brain develops can do a lot to curb parental uncertainty. As it turns out, development is a combination of genes and environment, temperament and parenting, play and affection.
Tiina Huttu and Kirsi Heikkinen’s Head First describes what’s going on in a tiny head at any particular stage. Relying on brain research, this guide describes how to best ensure favourable development while putting parents’ minds at ease: there are plenty of things not worth worrying about. It also explains how becoming a parent changes the parent’s brain – usually for the better. Child rearing is a growth process for both child and adult.
Written in an uncompromisingly understandable style, Head First is not only for parents and parents-to-be, but for other important people in a child’s life, including child-rearing professionals.
Science reporter, licentiate in neurosciences, and mother of two boys Tiina Huttu has extensively studied brain development. Kirsi Heikkinen MSocSci is the mother of two girls as well as a science journalist and editor whose area of expertise is brain research.
Finnish PDF
English contents list
“Now here is a book that could be put in a maternity package – or given to parents at their first ultrasound. Written by Tiina Huttu and Kirsi Heikkinen, two science journalists familiar with neurological research, Head First is an apt, warm book on everything expecting or new parents should know about the development of their little one’s brain.” – Helsingin Sanomat newspaper